STEDELIJK MUSEUM AMSTERDAM

PLACEText: Celeste Najt

The Stedelijk Museum is an international institution in Amsterdam dedicated to modern and contemporary art and design founded in 1874 which has been recently renovated. The Museum aims to provide a home for art, artists and a broad range of publics, where artistic production is actively fostered, presented, protected, reconsidered and renewed. Widely acknowledged as one of the most important collections, the Stedelijk’s holdings encompass more than 90,000 objects dating from the 1870s to the present and include painting, sculpture, film and video, installations, works on paper, artists’ books, photographs, graphic design, applied arts and industrial design.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Stedelijk Museum facade as seen from the Van Gogh Museum. Photo: John Lewis Marshall.

The impressive renovated building of the museum has a 9,423 square meters structure (101,428 square feet) and is an oeuvre of Benthem Crouwel Architects. Located right in the middle of Amsterdam’s Museumplein (Museum Plaza), it becomes an active common ground for the first time among the Stedelijk and its neighbors, the Rijksmuseum (National Gallery), the Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw.

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Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij.

The inaugural Exhibition is called Beyond Imagination, and features new projects and commissioned works by an invited group of 20 artists, both Dutch and foreign-born, now active in the Netherlands. It is installed in the new second-floor galleries and spill out into the auditorium and public spaces in the new building. The first temporary exhibition in the new building’s 1,092 square meters (11,754 square feet) column-free, open plan gallery features a major presentation of large-scale contemporary works and installations from the collection by Carl Andre, Rodney Graham, Joan Jonas, John Knight, Barbara Kruger, Melvin Moti and Diana Thater, among others.

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Stedelijk Museum new entrance hall. Photo: John Lewis Marshall.

With the opening of the renovated and expanded Stedelijk Museum, one-half of the ground floor of the historic 1895 building is now be dedicated to an installation of visual arts from the 1870s to the 1960s, presented in a dozen galleries. Although roughly chronological overall, the installation will offer distinct groups of works organized by subject matter (Landscape/ Cityscape), movement (Expressionism), time period (Around 1913) and other themes. Among the highlights will be key works in the careers of Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Chaïm Soutine, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, Charley Toorop, Max Beckmann, Jackson Pollock just to mention a few.

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Photo: Gert-Jan van Rooij.

The Stedelijk will proceed its program with a great retrospective of Mike Kelley, following the artist’s untimely death. The exhibition will open at the Stedelijk on December 15, 2012, and then travel to other major museums in Europe and America.

Let yourself be surprised by the new Stedelijk Museum, an enchanted building with amazing art inside.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Address: Museumplein 10, 1071DJ Amsterdam
Open: 10:00 – 18:00 (Tuesday, Wednesday till 17:00, Thursday till 22:00)
Closed on Monday and the public and schools, except on national holidays
Tel: +31 (0)20 5732 911
info@stedelijk.nl
http://www.stedelijk.nl

Text: Celeste Najt
Photos: © Stedelijk Museum

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